Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    the bridge from day to night
    the bridge from day to night
    the bridge from day to night
    Ebook87 pages33 minutes

    the bridge from day to night

    By Paul F. Clark

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    The title poem in David Zieroth’s the bridge from day to night follows the speaker across the Second Narrows Bridge to North Vancouver, a well-worn moment in a daily commute that opens a window into the sublime: “from the apex / of the bridge with traffic flying / I look directly into / their deepest clefts.” Such moments occur throughout the collection, as Zieroth explores the resonance built from layers of such ordinary moments as they accumulate throughout a lifetime—indistinct and imperceptible as they occur, but creating unseen undercurrents through memory and time.

    In this temporal landscape, the natural world becomes a touchstone, both entangled in and standing apart from the speaker’s internal narrative: “I brought from that forming hour a / precise smell of foliage: funeral wreaths / bore an acid scent.” Shifting fluidly through time, the speaker grows from a child to understand, reflect and then outlive his parents. Finally, the collection lights on the incongruities and contradictions in death: “still later I kick his flattened corpse / to the gutter, and it skids on concrete / a broken valise, weightless / on this segment of the journey.”

    With his characteristic humour, subtlety and ability to find transcendence in the everyday, Zieroth traces the delicate strands connecting the most minute and familiar details to the most profound mysteries, giving voice to the unknowable.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarbour Publishing
    Release dateMar 17, 2018
    ISBN9781550178364
    the bridge from day to night
    Author

    Paul F. Clark

    David Zieroth’s The Fly in Autumn (Harbour, 2009) won the Governor General’s Literary Award and was nominated for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize and the Acorn-Plantos Award for People’s Poetry in 2010. Zieroth also won The Dorothy Livesay Poetry Award for How I Joined Humanity at Last (Harbour, 1998). Other publications include the trick of staying and leaving (Harbour, 2023), watching for life (McGill-Queen’s, 2022), the bridge from day to night (Harbour, 2018), Zoo and Crowbar (Guernica Editions, 2015), Albrecht Dürer and me (Harbour, 2014), The November Optimist (Gaspereau, 2013), The Village of Sliding Time (Harbour, 2006), The Education of Mr. Whippoorwill: A Country Boyhood (Macfarlane Walter & Ross, 2002) and Crows Do Not Have Retirement (Harbour, 2001). His poems have been included in the Best Canadian Poetry series, shortlisted for National Magazine and Relit Awards and featured on Vancouver buses three times as part of Poetry in Transit. He watches urban life from his third-floor balcony in North Vancouver, BC, where he runs The Alfred Gustav Press and produces handmade poetry chapbooks twice per year.

    Read more from Paul F. Clark

    Related to the bridge from day to night

    Related ebooks

    Poetry For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Mountain Time

      Jan 1, 2021

      In the air you don’t know who you are or where My own self feels it is in wind being born These are currents a man made one eighth of smokeless fire fears but chooses A path south from Anchorage to a Mountain House Ungovern the northern land to pass

      10 min read

    • Article

      Any Given Day

      Mar 29, 2021

      Any Given Day
      11 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Jan 1, 2024

      “the possibility of joy in the face of death” —Georges Bataille Couldn’t get “I” nor “we” to settle down, stay unresolved in time in crisp white burial shirts could do bouts of theatrical weeping weary though exacting avant garde gestures of the carp

      4 min read

    • Article

      Portrait Of An Island

      Jun 3, 2021

      AN ISLAND provides refuge for refugees. Their roofs, tablecloths, and bedsheets wave from the port’s breeze. Temporarily permanent, adjacent to the water, each tent kneels behind the mayor’s office and in front of a tenth-century castle. The locals p

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Island (catullus 64)

      Mar 1, 2022

      Back then the evergreens tumbled downriverfrom the glaze-white runoff to the boot-stirred puddlesof amber young men who fulfilled our destiny,who clambered into ships, on horses, and in wagonspainting the newfound landscapes ours.Our calling was nobl

      9 min read

    • Article

      Until The Sea Closed Over Us And The Light Was Gone

      Jul 1, 2020

      —Dante, Canto XXVI But if the truth is dreamed of toward the morning—El Paso Although it was really last summer’s song,all this summer Despacito played on as slower then I turned myself to gazeupon Juarez. The summer everything hurts my eyes, a dozen

      6 min read

    • Article

      The Storytellers

      Apr 28, 2023

      The Storytellers
      3 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems

      Jan 1, 2021

      I learned the world through the bottoms of my feet, barein the creeks of summer, stepping on pebbles, the squidgeof moss between my toes. On hot asphalt, the hop and skipover cracks, feet already toughened by bramble, dirt, the pricklyground of pine

      4 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems by Joseph Brodsky

      May 12, 2020

      Two Poems by Joseph Brodsky
      7 min read

    • Article

      Apparition

      Mar 26, 2020

      Apparition
      8 min read

    • Article

      New Nature Writer Of The Year 2021 Runner-up

      Sep 23, 2021

      Former local government worker Mike is a keen walker and wildlife enthusiast, based in North Yorkshire. Prize judge Stephen Moss praised his entry as: “A delightful recollection of a long-ago boyhood, written with imagination and a real sense of the

      3 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      Jan 1, 2022

      The painting is of a door, its wood so warpedwith moisture it cannot close. It stays ajar leaving a sliver of light—enough to suggestsomething sweet and almost unreachable behind the door—and you sit in yourroom working on the bills or those comforti

      4 min read

    • Article

      Selkie

      Feb 3, 2022

      Selkie
      10 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems

      Sep 4, 2018

      In London. England. Who knows why?Perhaps this rumpled guyFrom central casting or a page of Dickens.He’s taking ordinary usTo haunts of the illustrious,Where even dull pulse quickens. A red felt hat’s dark fingered brim,Food-spotted vest are—him.A mo

      4 min read

    • Article

      Beautiful In The Distance

      Jun 24, 2019

      Beautiful In The Distance
      10 min read

    • Article

      A Symposium on Loss

      Mar 1, 2023

      A Symposium on Loss
      30 min read

    • Article

      The Time Machine

      Aug 4, 2021

      There’s a pattern built into this story – can you work it out from the numbers in bold at the start of each section? I’m sitting on the beach by Rhodes port, watching sailors load our luggage onto a ship bound for Rome. I don’t want to go, but my f

      7 min read

    • Article

      Song Of The Woods

      May 23, 2022

      Song Of The Woods
      7 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      May 1, 2019

      “My arm is so brown and so beautiful,” is a thought I haveas I’m about to turn off the lamp and go to sleep.I look at it a moment in the soft glow, and see it, briefly,as though it belonged to someone else. A reddishkind of brown, like a toasted almo

      7 min read

    • Article

      It’s Come to This

      Sep 1, 2021

      It’s Come to This
      16 min read

    • Article

      WILD EYES & RESTLESS WINDS

      Oct 4, 2017

      We’d taken refuge in the harbour. Westerly gales and westerly swell roared east across the Pentland Firth, the notoriously dangerous stretch of water situated just north of Scotland. Even the tide was emptying from Northern Atlantic to North Sea – ev

      6 min read

    • Article

      Returned With Love

      Jul 1, 2021

      Returned With Love
      4 min read

    • Article

      “Korean Soap Opera”

      Sep 7, 2017

      “Korean Soap Opera”
      2 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      Nov 1, 2022

      This is the time of year when stormsspin up from distant dustand sand and make their way to us,and we worry and adjust the scales we carry in our headsto account for luck and prayer.We buy batteries and candles, cordsand water to prepare. There are t

      5 min read

    • Article

      In The Thick Of It

      Feb 23, 2022

      In The Thick Of It
      3 min read

    • Article

      Six Poems

      Jan 1, 2023

      Magic lights near, far,everywhere.Off the kitchen, upthe skinny flight of stairsto the FIRE door, stairwellto the roof, this spot. Tiny lights, tiny tiny lights—Elijah, Sparrow, Shira, Dan.Rust and peeling door-paintin plum, from one dark street toan

      2 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for the bridge from day to night

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      the bridge from day to night - Paul F. Clark

      1

      North Van morning

      the ships glide

      slowly under a red

      apparatus lifting containers

      from rusty decks

      above the water, each crane

      a Trojan Horse

      the SeaBus – the Otter? –

      passes under its regard

      its power

      to raise the materials

      we desire passed on

      to the men and women

      who cross below, reading

      or gazing into thoughts

      on a routine morning

      a siren cleaves through

      to the edge

      of consciousness, a crow

      calling from the conifers

      the tallest branches of

      alders click in a code

      no one gets anymore

      although squirrels

      scrambling through the vines

      stop and listen

      zero energy after work

      I kick off my shoes, drop

      papers wanting my hand

      under direct light, throw my coat

      fix my path on evening’s couch: being

      gravely horizontal, looking up

      but glazed, watching

      not the spider in the front door corner

      but scenes repeating

      words sudden and said

      I drift and lift off and float down

      my street, peer into windows still open

      sun now beyond black mountains

      no one drawing the drapes

      still reliving the commute

      arriving to grip amber glass

      or finger white china, tap

      on the chintz edge

      when I roam too far, I cross above

      the man who curls on the sidewalk

      by the veggie restaurant, his head

      a red toque, under piles of plaid blankets

      yellow milk crate for his brown banana

      air turning to steam above his face

      a sunburnt whiteness, a witness

      arresting above damp concrete

      I dip down here

      nudge his shoulder, touch his bearded cheek

      tell him the angel of warmth

      comes to bear him to a new hearth

      to bathe him, feed him, but not

      bind him to regular hours

      not require of him to surrender his search

      for butts and bottles nor even demand

      he learn anew how to look

      at our passing faces

      maritime clouds

      their steel bellies have brought

      the warm air of the ocean

      from some island we can smell

      so that in the closed dark

      of the night we push open

      our windows and feel again

      the elements of air and water

      entering us, making us

      ourselves under maritime

      clouds, the rushing, pushing

      mass that says no sun today

      just that sweet moist air

      and the calling of the crows

      that have been greeting it

      since light began, not long

      ago, when we stood trembling

      like good dogs at the start

      of a hunt, we who are waiting

      for a change, that turn of the

      earth that is really a lurch

      into pungent spring

      coming on an offshore wind

      to find us overdressed

      in down, our throats white

      from winter, our eyes

      cold and inward

      man at bus stop

      …watches cars

      wrinkled lanky folds

      lean on advertising

      for the uncommon convertible

      his eyes narrow

      he scuffs dirt

      women rushed from

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1